Raise or rise?

Compare these two sentences:
The prices are rising.
They are raising the prices.
These two verbs are often confused because they look similar but, in fact, they are quite different.
When you raise something, you lift it to a higher position or increase it. When someone or something rises, they move from a lower to a higher position. Rise can also mean to increase in number or quantity.
Raise is a regular, transitive verb, which means that it is always followed by a direct object:
The little girl raised her hand.
In this example, "her hand" is the direct object. If you don't add a direct object, the meaning of the sentence is not complete. If you just say: "The little girl raised", people would expect you to say something else to complete the sentence.

The little girl raised her hand
Image

On the other hand, rise is an irregular, intransitive verb, so it is never followed by a direct object. Something rises, but you cannot rise something. Examples:
The temperature is rising.
The sun rises in the east.
The past tense of this verb is rose, and the past participle is risen.

The sun rises in the east
Image

Another verb that can get confused with these two is arise. It is intransitive and irregular too (arise, arose, arisen), but much more formal than rise. It can also mean "get up", but rise is preferred for literal meaning, while arise is mostly used with figurative meaning: They are trying to deal with the problems that arise from immigration. A new crisis has arisen.

Let's have a look at a few collocations and idioms:

RAISE

• Raise your voice: shout. Don't raise your voice like that, please. I'm not deaf!
• Raise money / funds / a loan means to collect money. They are raising money for charity.
• Raise a child means to bring up a child. They raised her daughter as a Catholic.
• Raise animals: take care of or breed animals They raise chickens on their farm.
• Raise your glass to somebody means to hold up your glass and wish them happiness or good luck before you drink. 
• Raise hell is to protest angrily or cause a considerable disturbance.
• Raise the roof is to produce a lot of noise in a building.
• Raise the salary.
• Raise the flag.

Raise your glass
Image

RISE

• Rise early: He rises early every day.
• Rise to one's feet is to stand up.
• Rise to the occasion / challenge: to show that you are able to deal with an unexpected situation.
• A river rises where it begins to flow. The Thames rises in the Cotswolds.
• If mountains rise in the distance, they become visible.
• Rise from the ashes is to come to life again.
• Rise to power. Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in 1919.
• Rise and fall. Today we've studied the rise and fall of the British Empire in our History class.
• Rise through / from the ranks is to work one's way to the top. She rose through the ranks to become managing director.
• Your hair rises when you feel cold or frightened.
• If your spirits rise you get happier.

Check what you have learnt by doing this exercise:

Note: if you cannot see the exercise above, try this link.

Finally, let's relax with this beautiful song by Craig David, featuring Sting, called "Rise and fall"

Collocations: do, play or go with sports and other activities

In British English, you can "do sport". In American English you can "play sports".

A typical mistake Spanish speakers make is using the verb practise for sports:

*I love practising sport. This should be: I love sport.

*I usually practise sport every evening. This should be: I usually do sport every evening.

However, in American English you can use the verb practise or practice (as it is spelt there) to mean "to train": The team is practicing for tomorrow's competition.

When other words related to sports are used, we may use other verbs:
"What sports do you do?"
"I play tennis".
Observe these pictures:

Go skiing	Do karate	Play tennis

There are three verbs that collocate with sports and other free time activities: go, do and play, but they are not interchangeable:

• Go is used with activities and sports that end in -ing. The verb go here implies that we go somewhere to practice this sport: go swimming.
• Do is used with recreational activities and with individual, non-team sports or sports in which a ball is not used, like martial arts, for example: do a crossword puzzle, do athletics, do karate.
• Play is generally used with team sports and those sports that need a ball or similar object (puck, disc, shuttlecock...). Also, those activities in which two people or teams compete against each other: play football, play poker, play chess.

In this table there is a list of sports and activities that collocate with these verbs:

Go	Do	Play
riding	aerobics	badminton
jogging	gymnastics	table-tennis
hitch-hiking	taekwondo	football
fishing	judo	basketball
sailing	karate	chess
windsurfing	kung-fu	cricket
skiing	ballet	board games
snowboarding	exercise	snooker
swimming	yoga	hockey
dancing	athletics	baseball
skating	archery	rugby
cycling	a crossword puzzle	volleyball
running	tai chi	squash

Some exceptions to the rules:

• You use do with three activities that end in -ing: do boxing, do body-building and do weight-lifting because they don't imply moving along as the other activities ending in -ing.
• Golf: if there is an idea of competition, you use the verb play. However, you can say go golfing if you do it for pleasure: Tiger Woods plays golf. We'll go golfing at the weekend. 

Tiger Woods
Image

Now try doing these exercises:

• Easy
• Choose the correct verb

Collocations: spend and waste

Both verbs spend and waste are related to time and money, but there is a big difference in meaning:

• You can spend your money on things, but if you buy more than is necessary or things that are not useful, you are wasting your money. She has spent a lot of money on her wedding dress. (and she thinks that’s money well spent). She wastes lots of money on clothes she doesn´t need. (that money is not well spent)
• Likewise, you can spend time doing something, which is possitive, but if you feel that the time passes in a negative, unproductive manner, then you’re wasting your time. You spend a lot of hours watching TV and I think you are wasting your time. Go on, do something useful!

Picture by 401(K) 2012

So, both spend and waste can form collocations with words related to money and time. Here are a few: spend your free time, the day, the weekend, an hour, a fortune, thousands,...

Apart from these, they can also be found in other collocations which are not related to time or money:

• Waste an opportunity. Never waste an opportunity to say “I love you” to someone you really like.
• Spend (a lot of) effort. You spend too much effort on things that are not important.

Waste is also a noun that refers to an unusuable or unwanted substance or material. In this case, we can find expressions such as: industrial waste, nuclear waste, waste disposal, waste pipes,...

A Complete Waste of Time

There are also some idioms and proverbs:

• Waste one’s breath: to waste time talking trying to persuade someone.  Don’t waste your breath, you’re not going to make me change my mind.
• Waste not, want not is a proverb which means that if you use your resources wisely, you will never be poor or needy.
• Go to waste: to be unused and therefore thrown away. If you don’t eat the meat in your fridge today, it will go to waste.
• A waste of space: a thing or person that is not useful. Her husband is a complete waste of space.
• Spend a penny means to go to the toilet. In England, public toilets for ladies used to have coin operated locks, and if someone wanted to use them they had to introduce a penny coin in the slot. This idiom is a bit old-fashioned these days.

Penny slot toilet door lock

Finally, let’s watch an excerpt from Fawlty Towers that always comes to my mind when I hear the expression “a waste of space”. Poor Manuel! Always being bossed around by Basil!

Collocations: have and take

Image: 'Day 092/366 - To Do List' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26104563@N00/2381294958

A collocation is a combination of words that occurs frequently enough to be recognized as a common combination. When learning a foreign language, it’s really useful to learn collocations instead of single words, because they are much easier to remember and, by using them, you will sound more natural and people will understand you more clearly.

In a previous post we saw the collocations with do and make. Today we are going to see when to use have or take. The difference here is not so straightforward, because sometimes both verbs can be used and, in other cases, Americans use take while British people use have with the same meaning.

Have can be used with object nouns to refer to a number of different activities. In these cases, the verb has little or no meaning by itself, that’s why it is known as a “delexical verb”. In American English take is used instead of have when referring to common activities such as washing, resting, eating or drinking:

• Have/take a holiday/vacation, a rest, a nap,
• have / take a shower, a bath...
• Have/take a meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a drink...

He has taken a bath...literally!!
Image credits

Sometimes both verbs can be found with no change of meaning on both sides of the Atlantic:

• Have/ take a break
• have/ take a bite (eat something)

Apart from these cases, have and take can be found in the next collocations:

Have	Take
a good time, fun, a laugh, a party	care (of)
a talk, a chat, a conversation, a word with	a decision
a baby (give birth)	exercise
a problem, difficulty in, trouble	notes
a relationship	a taxi, a cab, a train, a bus...
an excuse	a look
a grudge against someone	an exam
work	a photo, a picture
a (nervous) breakdown	a risk
a headache, toothache...	an interest in
	cover

In all these cases have is not an auxiliary verb, so we need do /does /did for questions and the negative. Besides, it is never used with got, and it cannot be contracted (‘ve / ‘s).
* We hadn’t lunch yesterday.
We didn’t have lunch yesterday.
*I have got a talk with my brother about that issue.
I have had a talk with my brother about that issue.
*I’ve dinner at home every day.
I have dinner at home every day.
On the other hand, it can be found in any tense, even the progressive or continuous tenses.
She is having a baby next month. (present continuous)

Now you can try these exercises:

Collocations: make and do

Do and make are two verbs with similar meanings, and sometimes it's difficult to choose one or the other.

Make often expresses the idea of creation:

Let's make a cake!

Do is used to talk about an activity without saying exactly what it is.

What are you doing?

Do is always used with something, anything, everything, nothing...

Come on, boys, do something!

http://awfullibrarybooks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Things-to-Make-and-Do-1.jpg

In other cases there are no clear rules. We have to learn the different collocations.

A collocation is a combination of two or more words that happens very often in a language. These words are generally used together. For example, in English you can say: “I like strong tea”, where “strong tea” is a collocation, because both words tend to appear together. It's not usual to see a synonym for “strong” instead of this word: “powerful tea” cannot be said. So, language learners should try to use the correct collocations if they want to sound natural when speaking a foreign language.

That's what happens with do and make: we have to learn the collocations in which they appear. These are the most important:

DO		MAKE
one's duty	the housework	sure	an offer
good	harm	arrangements	a suggestion
business	one's best	a mistake	a phone call
a favour	research	an appointment	sense
the shopping	the washing-up	a promise	the most of...
the dishes	the homework	love	war

Have a look at this presentation and do the exercises at the end of it:


 Now you can do these exercises to see how much you have learnt:

• Fill in the gaps with make or do 1
• Fill in the gaps with make or do 2
• Choose the correct answer